I'm somewhat new to the American Express Platinum card (US) and am wondering about people's experience with the plat concierge service. Has anyone gotten anything extraordinary? What have you used them for?
All about expectations in my experience. Miracle workers they are not, but they can be helpful. They tend not to have local knowledge, and are prone to solutions that approximate what you could get from google/national directories, but will sometimes do legwork for you that saves time and are generally helpful. Examples being the best perhaps: - A few years ago when I was organizing a family Christmas I asked them to find me a way to get a tree delivered to a house I rented in Sun Valley. They pointed me to a national distributor that quoted nearly $1k... 15min of googling and calling a local nursery on my own and they agreed to hold one for me to pickup after hours on Dec. 23rd for 40 bucks. Concierge fail. - When I moved to a new city I was looking for a place that sold high-end appliances, and an email to AmEx concierge produced at list of Miele dealers. After a follow up request the rep called every dealer on the list and let me know which carried washers/dryers as opposed to just vacuums. Concierge win. - A similar request on another occasion "Where in SF, NY, Denver, ATL can I buy Minima frames" (guess what my travel schedule was that month...) was replied to within the hour with a list of opticians that the rep had called to make sure they had what I was looking for in stock in the two westerly cities, with an apology that they couldn't contact the east coast places because it was after hours and they would try again in the morning. The results were in my inbox before I awoke. Concierge win. - Dinner reservations: if it's a place in the AmEx book, they're great and you can expect a good table. If not, it seems like they're using opentable. I've requested bookings before at places that I've known to be good local shops when I'm traveling with a request for a recommendation for a similar alternative if my first choice is full. More often then not they recommend some crap national chain (once they recommended an outback steakhouse as an alternative to a locavoire place and earned my ire for some time). Concierge mixed, but I don't generally bother now. - Flower deliver: no idea why they keep advertising this as what they do. I can use ftd's website, and get bonus points for it if I wanted a national chain - pet peeve, why they can't keep a list of local florists I have no idea...
I have used the Platinum Concierge to make reservations at restaurants that were showing no availability (or openings only at bad times) on OpenTable.
I have as well, but always keep in mind that sometimes if you call the restaurant yourself, they may give you a table even though OpenTable is showing full. However, the Plat Concierge has come through a few times when even calling the restaurant directly didn't work. This was my recent experience trying to get a last minute (day before) table on a Friday night at a popular restaurant in SF between 7 and 9 pm: 1) OpenTable showed full 2) Called the restaurant directly and was offered 10 pm 3) Had the Plat Concierge call the restaurant directly and they were able to squeeze me in at 9:30 pm
I've never had an issue with them when making dinning reservations. Also, when I was in Philadelphia in June, they were able to pull some kind of strings to get me and my family tickets to a preview to a new art museum that wasn't open to the public yet. I don't know if they had tickets set aside for these requests but they were able to do it which was better than what the hotel person could do after telling us she couldn't get us in to the museum she was talking up. I think it really will depend on what you are asking them to do.
Circling back to report that I've experienced a lot less success recently using the concierge for dining reservations. From a couple of tries in the last few months, it doesn't seem like they can do much better than OpenTable (at least in DC).
